Can you believe there are 43 new shows debuting in the next few months? 43! But out of that prodigious number there are only two I want to watch. One is Billions, starting on Showtime on Sunday, Jan. 17th. It's a suspense series set in the world of high finance starring Paul Giamatti and Damien Lewis. The other is London Spy, starting on Thursday, Jan. 21st. on BBC America. It's about a young man unwittingly caught up in the world of espionage played by Ben Whishaw (the new young nerdish Q in the James Bond films). Also in the cast are Jim Broadbent and Charlotte Rampling.

Anyone still watching NCIS? Michael Weatherly is leaving the show at the end of the current season. No more Di Nozzo.

It's wait-and-see for me too. Considering the amount of money that has obviously been poured into the show, no one's going to pull the plug on it any time soon. But it's interesting that Colony and Jennifer Lopez's show, Shades of Blue, both have protagonists who are coerced into spying on their peers.

One show I don't need more than one episode to tell me I like it is Billions. What a terrific cat-and-mouse story -- it looks as if the two leads are going to take turns playing the mouse. I don't particularly like Damian Lewis, but he seems credible as the billionaire hedge fund manager. Paul Giamatti as the Attorney General out to get him is his usual believable self. And what a pair of scenes to bookend the very first episode! I never saw that coming.

But another show isn't worth watching at all -- USA's Second Chance. It's a Frankenstein story, cliché-ridden and sloppy. An elderly former sheriff is killed and then brought back to life in the "best version" of himself -- younger and stronger and with stubble on his face. A few half-baked high-techy f/x were tossed in, in a lame attempt to give the show a futuristic look, but Second Chance is about as forward-looking as Ma and Pa Kettle.